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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoJonathan Quilter | DispatchCleanTurn employees Rick Harrison, left, and Dryone Billups load a refrigerator at Poindexter Village as part of a salvage project at the closed housing complex.

Because he has a felony conviction, Antoine Turner couldn’t have lived in the public-housing
community known as Poindexter Village.

But through a new partnership between the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority and the
Columbus Urban League, the closed complex now is a testing ground for what Turner and other
ex-offenders need most.

“A chance,” he said.

Turner, 36, is among 15 local men and women who started work this week on a “green salvage
project” at Poindexter, removing appliances, air-conditioning units and other scrap items from the
approximately 400 apartments on the Near East Side.

The jobs are full-time and pay well above minimum wage. And the workers don’t have to worry
about being turned away because of their pasts.

“One of the big challenges is, people serve their time, but there are still so many doors that
remain closed to them,” said Charles Hillman, president and CEO of the housing authority.

“We are prohibited from housing ex-offenders. However, we recognize the benefit — in so many
ways — of their employment.”

The Urban League chose participants for the project from its work-force-development files, where
there’s no shortage of job-hungry applicants who’ve been stymied by their criminal records.

“When I pick up the paper and look at the unemployment rate, I almost laugh,” said Dorian
Wingard, who works on strategy and business development at the Urban League.

“Here, it’s double digits,” he said. “You’re talking 20, 23 percent.”

Because the Urban League doesn’t run salvage operations, it tapped a local company to manage the
Poindexter project. CleanTurn is a social-enterprise company that works with nonprofit
organizations to hire hard-to-employ populations such as ex-offenders.

“So many are ready to move forward,” said CleanTurn’s John Rush. “They just need the
opportunity.”

Both the Urban League and CMHA said the partnership will neither make nor save much money for
their organizations, even if the salvage items bring in a top-end figure of about $500 per
apartment, or roughly $200,000.

He and Hillman said they hope the partnership leads to additional projects, whether for the
housing authority, the city or through work on vacant housing.

The housing authority is in the midst of a long-range plan to close the complexes that are most
expensive to maintain. Officials want to tear down all buildings on the 26-acre Poindexter site,
but some neighborhood residents are fighting the plan because of the historic significance of the
70-year-old community.

The city plans to spend $1.1 million to demolish nearby Poindexter Tower, a long-vacant
condominium complex that is not part of the housing authority property.

Partners Achieving Community Transformation, a coalition of the housing authority, Ohio State
University and the city, is developing a master plan for the area.

Turner said he and many others who are working to move beyond their mistakes want only the best
for the neighborhood. They also want to contribute.

“Believe it or not, we care,” he said. “If we keep moving forward, and do what we’re supposed to
do, the sky’s the limit.”